Exactly 17 years ago today, America suffered one of the worst terrorist attacks in our nation’s history.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001 is a day that will forever live in infamy in our national conscience.

On that day, Islamic terrorists hijacked 4 commercial jetliners.

At 8:45 a.m. they crashed the first plane into the northern tower of the World Trade Center.

At approximately 9:03 a.m. the second commercial jet was crashed into the south tower.

Twenty minutes later a third plane was crashed into the Pentagon.

And a fourth plane, which officials believe was headed for the Capitol or the White House, was brought down by the heroics of several passengers who tried to overpower the hijackers, crashing it into rural Pennsylvania.

When it was all said and done—almost 3000 people lost their lives that day—that’s roughly 600 more casualties than those who died in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Not long after this attack on our country, the F.B.I. quickly uncovered the fact that these terrorists were Islamic Fundamentalists.

Up until this attack, most Americans had no idea what Islam stood for or why some of its followers would commit these heinous acts of terrorism against us.

I mean, how could a religion that holds itself up as a religion of ‘peace and love’ be responsible for the carnage that took place on that day? Or were the men who committed this act of terrorism, in the name of Islam, simply acting contrary to the tenets of the Islamic faith?

Well, let’s look briefly at what the Islamic religion believes.

Islam says 5 things to the world about itself—5 deceptions.

Deception #1—Islam is a religion of love

Matthew 22:36-40 (NLT2) “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?” Jesus replied, “‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

Jesus condenses all 613 commandments in the Law of Moses into these two—love God and your fellow man.

Do you know that these two commandments are not in the Koran?

The word “love” appears 27 times in the Koran—“Allah loves this,” “Allah loves that…”—but the commandment to love God and your neighbor, who Jesus defined as anyone who is in need—is not found in the Koran.

Now most Muslims are loving people (because they have been made in the image of God who is love)—but what makes them so violent and hateful is their religion—a religion containing doctrines of demons called Islam.

This is not to say that all Muslims are violent hateful people that believe in or agree with all the teachings of Islam—but as someone has said, “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but pretty much all terrorists are Muslim.”

Islam is not a religion of love—Muslims are taught only to love other Muslims (and then only those belonging to their sect of Islam) but to hate all infidels—those who refuse to convert to Islam.

Under Islamic law the whole world must be ‘Islamized’—brought into submission to Islam before the world can have true peace.

The Islamic religion divides the world into two groups: Dara al-Islam and Dara al-Harb.

The Dara al-Islam is the house of Islam containing all true Muslims (also known as the house of peace)—anyone who is not a Muslim belongs to Dara al-Harb (house of war).

The Dara al-Islam cannot have peace on earth until the Dara al-Harb is destroyed.

It’s not until all of the Jews, Christians and pagans are gone and the whole world is Islamized that there can be peace on earth—this is a cardinal doctrine of the Islamic religion.

Islam is a warrior religion committed to converting the world to Islam—or killing those who refuse. In the Islamic faith, no matter what has to be done to achieve this goal and win this cause of converting the world to Islam—is acceptable. Even if it means killing innocent women and children—it’s all acceptable because the end justifies the means for Muslim radical fundamentalists.

So, Islam is not a religion of peace.

Deception #3—Allah is just another name for the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

Do you know that many Christian leaders, including some of the popes, say that the god of the Muslims is the same God that Jews and Christians worship?—that is absolutely false!

Who is Allah?

To understand Allah you have to understand Mohammed. Mohammed the prophet of Islam was born in 570 AD in the city of Mecca in Arabia. He was a 26 year old camel driver when he first ‘heard a voice’ that he later considered to be a revelation. At first, even Mohammed himself didn’t know if he was hearing from God or the jinns (evil spirits—genies).

In time, with the help of his wife, he came to believe that he was a prophet of God—and so did the pagan people of Mecca and Medina who came to embrace him as a prophet from God.

These people worshipped a pantheon of gods—360 gods, one for every day of the year.

When Mohammed became their ‘prophet’ he basically said to them:

“This is old stuff, the Jews and the Christians are right, they’re monotheists and we must create for ourselves a monotheistic god as well. And what we’ll do is take the greatest of all the 360 gods—‘Ella he’ (Moon Crescent) and we will make Ella he our Allah.”

Allah being the generic name for God.

This is where Allah came from—the pagan moon god who was worshipped as a war god, a sword god. Many people don’t know that, they believe that Allah is just another name for the God of the Bible.

Deception #4—Muslims believe in Jesus Christ just like Christians.

Does Islam believe in Jesus Christ? Yes, but beware of counterfeits—their ‘Jesus’ is not our Jesus. The Jesus Christ that is coming back someday, according to Islamic teaching—is going to be a Muslim!

In 1994, Yassir Arafat was in Bethlehem in the Church of the Nativity and he got up and made a speech and said, “Jesus Christ was the first Palestinian Muslim revolutionary.” Did he make that up? No, it comes from the Islamic faith.

According to the Hadith (Islamic written tradition), Jesus Christ will come back to the earth

the second time and kill the Antichrist in battle (who is a Jew according to Islam).

He will then go up to Jerusalem and pray on the Temple Mount with 400,000 Muslim believers. Then this Jesus, will lead these Muslims, to destroy all the crosses and churches of the Christians and all the synagogues of the Jews. And on that day all the “people of the Book” (Jews and Christians) will be put to death with the sword by Jesus Christ the Muslim.

Is that your Jesus? That’s not my Jesus!

Deception #5—The Koran is the Word of God

Muslims believe that the Koran is the word of Allah to Mohammed, it was revealed at one time, it was never changed or amended, and it was never touched by human hands—yet that is nothing more than Islamic folklore and tradition not rooted in fact.

The Koran has been revised and changed many times. There was a group of scholars from Saarbrucken University in Germany. They went to Yemen and in Yemen they found a genizah (repository) of ancient parchments, which contained passages that had been deleted from the Koran. A hundred thousand parchments, which they couldn’t take out of Yemen but they photocopied them.

Allah created everything “in a twinkling of an eye,” “in two days,” “in four days,” “in six days.”

“A day equals a thousand years,” also “fifty-thousand years.”

“Jesus is not the Son of God— yet He is…”

The Koran blesses the Jews and the Christians on one page and then curses them on the next, then it blesses them and then it curses them, and on and on it goes.

There are scientific errors in the Koran. Even Arabian legends are recounted as actual happenings.

The Koran contains much superstition and occultism, especially its references to jinn (genies).

It contains immoral teachings, “a man may have up to four wives and as many concubines (sexual partners) as he chooses.”

Further the Koran teaches that men are superior to women and that Muslim husbands are free to beat their disobedient wives.

Such are the teachings (doctrines of demons) of Islam!

What can we as Americans take away from what happened on our soil on 9/11?

In our Calvary Magazine that month which was devoted to covering the aftermath of 9-11 it reported that:

“Pastor Skip (Heitzig) toured the site of Ground Zero, escorted by Mike Finizio, senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship of New York. Skip was struck by the totality of the destruction. A somber mood pervaded the site. Suddenly, a fireman pointed to a perfectly formed cross, created by metal support beams violently ripped apart in the destruction of the towers. ‘It’s a sign!’ the firefighter said adamantly…I looked up and there it was!’”

Many would read that and say, “Superstitious nonsense!”—but I believe he was right—I think God was speaking to us on 9-11.

One of the things He was trying to communicate to us is that in America we have so much wealth and material blessings (the Twin Towers being a symbol of our financial prosperity)—but unfortunately, we are very poor eternally speaking.

Many are building a kingdom for themselves by laying up treasures on the earth but are not “rich toward God.” Jesus said, “Beware! Guard against every kind of material greed. Life is not measured by how much you own.” (Luke 12:15)

And pray for Muslims to come to the true Christ and find true peace in the King of Peace!